JT International
JTI
We were formed in 1999 when our parent company JT Group acquired the non-US operations of R.J.
ID: 71175716023-03
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Mariateresa Vivaldini (Member of the European Parliament)
16 Dec 2025 · Tobacco Industry
Meeting with Katarina Barley (Member of the European Parliament)
30 Oct 2025 · Tabaksteuerrichtlinie
Meeting with Michalis Hadjipantela (Member of the European Parliament)
28 Oct 2025 · Meeting on Tobacco Excise Directive
Response to Revision of EU rules on sustainable finance disclosure
30 May 2025
JTI appreciates the opportunity to contribute to this Call for Evidence. Please find our contribution in attachment.
Read full responseResponse to Delegated Regulation amending Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 (EU Deforestation Regulation)
9 May 2025
JTI stands behind the aim of preventing deforestation and forest degradation, as set out in the EU Deforestation Regulation. Ensuring a sustainable wood supply and contributing to conserving and rehabilitating forests are key objectives set out in the JT Group Sustainability Targets. One of our targets is to achieve net-zero deforestation of managed natural forests throughout the entire tobacco business supply chain by 2030. As such, we welcome the opportunity to provide feedback on the Draft Delegated Act amending Annex I of the EUDR. We have two main points which we urge the Commission to take into consideration in finalizing the draft delegated act: Tax Stamps: It is JTIs view that the text of the draft delegated act should expressly exclude tax stamps from the scope of the EUDR for the purposes of clarity and legal certainty. Tax stamps are typically issued by governments nationally, which makes it practically impossible for companies like ours to complete the due diligence and traceability requirements imposed by the EUDR. Specifically, regarding tax stamps supplied from outside the EU, suppliers may be unwilling to provide the necessary information to comply with the EUDR thereby negatively impacting the export of products into such countries where the tax stamps are issued. Moreover, we acquire tax stamps from entities that are not our suppliers in the EUDR sense, even if one may argue that they are engaged in commercial activity. They are designated by the governments sometimes, special government agencies including but not limited to controlled mint houses (the same entities that are responsible for printing banknotes), or specific private entities authorized for this purpose. Although, JTI has a legal obligation to affix tax stamps on our products, such national tax stamps issuing authorities are not contractually bound to JTI nor are they bound to submit to comprehensive requests such as those imposed by the EUDR. Intercompany transfers: In its latest FAQ, the Commission clarifies how the EUDR applies to company groups. FAQ 3.13 explains that company groups have the possibility to mandate one of their members as an authorized representative to submit due diligence statements on behalf of all members of the group. Our view is that transactions between companies within the same group that act as end consumers and do not involve resale to other companies, should be exempt from compliance with the EUDR. While the responsibility of performing the required EUDR assessments (including reporting of a DDS before the products in scope will be placed on the EU market) would remain, any further transfers of those respective products between entities within the same group would not refer again to the same DDS, thus avoiding unnecessary administrative burden.
Read full responseMeeting with José Cepeda (Member of the European Parliament)
6 May 2025 · Legislation current term
Meeting with Aurelijus Veryga (Member of the European Parliament)
24 Mar 2025 · The upcoming Tobacco Products Directive
Meeting with Auke Zijlstra (Member of the European Parliament)
21 Jan 2025 · Tobacco tax directive
Meeting with Pietro Fiocchi (Member of the European Parliament)
4 Dec 2024 · Harm Reduction
Response to European Sustainability Reporting Standards
7 Jul 2023
JTI [1] welcomes the opportunity to respond to the European Commissions consultation on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). Their adoption will mark a key milestone to ensure alignment with existing international sustainability reporting standards (ISRS). Investments can and should support sustainability, including in both environmental and social aspects, as an increasing number of stakeholders are demanding that financial markets shift from perceived short-term, siloed investments to a model of long-term, inclusive, and sustainable economy. JTI fully supports that the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) builds on the double materiality concept and seeks to establish common standards for non-financial reporting, ensuring transparency and some degree of comparability. Yet, we remain concerned about the duplication and interoperability of Sustainable Finance regulations. In particular, the approach to single-out specific sectors on the sector-agnostic ESRS, regarding the inclusion of 'involvement in activities related to cultivation and production of tobacco' under the sector agnostic/cross-cutting standards (i.e., ESRS 2, SBM-1 on Disclosure Requirements on Strategy). JTI recommends that any sector-specific disclosures should be covered accordingly in the sector-specific standards to be drafted by EFRAG and we look forward to a continued dialogue over the next months. [1]Japan Tobacco International (JTI) is a leading international tobacco company with operations in more than 130 countries. JTI is the global owner (outside of the USA) of both Winston, the number two cigarette brand in the world, and Camel, and has the largest share in sales for both brands. Its other global cigarette brands include Mevius and LD. JTI is also a major player in the international market for reduced risk products with its heated tobacco brand, Ploom, and e-cigarette brand, Logic. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, JTI employs close to 46,000 people globally and has been awarded Global Top Employer for eight consecutive years. JTI is a member of the Japan Tobacco Group of Companies. For more information, visit http://www.jti.com.
Read full responseResponse to Revised recommendation on smoke-free environments
19 Jul 2022
JTI is a leading international tobacco and vaping company selling its products in more than 130 countries. It is the global owner of both Winston, the number two cigarette brand in the world, and Camel, outside the USA. Other global brands include MEVIUS and LD. JTI is also a major player in the international vaping market with its heated tobacco brand, Ploom, and e-cigarette brand, Logic.
Proper policy decisions should be based on evidence and the views of all affected parties, in line with the European Commission guidelines on Better Regulation. We at JTI therefore welcome the opportunity to participate in this consultation on the initiative to review the Recommendation on smoke-free environments.
We understand that tobacco smoke may present a behavioral or social nuisance to non-smokers and recognize that many people have concerns about exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
However, health risk assessments, conducted as part of numerous studies that evaluate the levels of smoke constituents in the air related to smoking in outdoor public spaces, have reached limited conclusions. Furthermore, these existing studies show wide variabilities regarding the measurement conditions and, consequently, the reported levels of smoke constituents.
Based on all currently available studies, smoking bans in open outdoor environments are therefore not justified from a health risk assessment perspective.
That said, we believe that all smokers should show consideration for those around them and should not smoke when children are present. We advocate tailored, practical, and effective solutions that accommodate the legitimate interests of both smokers and non-smokers.
Emerging products, such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs), provide adult smokers with an alternative to cigarettes. They are intended to provide a satisfying experience similar to smoking, while reducing exposure to harmful substances.
Creating an environment where it becomes difficult to find a place to use e-cigarettes and HTPs is discriminatory towards adult smokers who have made the informed choice to buy and consume a potentially reduced-risk product.
Furthermore, based on available research data, prohibiting, or restricting the use of e-cigarettes and HTPs in public places (whether inside or outside) is not justified. These products are non-combustible and provide significantly reduced exposure to potentially harmful compounds in comparison to combustible tobacco cigarettes.
Unlike conventional tobacco products, environmental exposure to e-cigarettes and HTPs is derived from exhaled breath diluted in a large volume of air, and there is no scientific evidence of harm to bystanders. No sidestream aerosol or equivalent is produced by e-cigarettes or HTPs. While exhaled vapor can impact indoor air quality in terms of an increase in the concentration of some constituents, such measurable increases are transient under ordinary and foreseeable conditions and would be well within existing regulatory standards used for workplaces or general indoor air quality levels.
Outdoors, the aerosol exhaled by an e-cigarette or a HTP user is easily dispersed and highly diluted in the open air and the evidence available does not indicate any adverse health effects.
In conclusion, current studies and scientific data do not provide sufficient evidence to justify the extension of the Recommendation on smoke-free environments (2009/C 296/02) to include emerging products, nor to explicitly include certain outdoor and quasi-outdoor spaces in the definition of smoke-free environments.
Scientific evidence supporting the above, and published by leading health bodies, academic institutions, and national public health authorities, can be found in our attached detailed submission.
Read full responseMeeting with Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen (Director-General Communication)
10 May 2022 · Exchange with a group of Romanian journalists, who are sponsored by the European JTI Journalist scholarship, on Commission's communication strategy/press relations during the COVID crisis/war in Ukraine
Response to Implementing act under Article 16(2) of the Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU
2 Oct 2017
Implementing the obligations defined in the draft Implementing Act for Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) Article 16 (IA) will limit the possibility for Member States to continue using their current (or defining their future) security feature, and will, instead, lead to the imposition of layered tax stamp solutions in non-tax stamp Member States. All this will occur instead of the intended outcome of the TPD legislation, which included the promotion of innovative and digital solutions that are much more forward looking than outdated security features such as tax stamps that have been copied and counterfeited for hundreds of years.
The TPD calls on Member States to ensure that all unit packets of tobacco products carry a tamper proof security feature, composed of visible and invisible elements. The Commission should respect the intentions of the lawmaker and avoid additional layers of security features which are not requested by primary legislation (e.g., semi – covert). Indeed, inventing a new category of security feature not recognized by any reputable security feature standards body and mandating that this category to be applied to all cigarette packs in the EU brings a new meaning to exceeding the powers conferred by legislation.
Moreover, the IA suggests that every pack of cigarettes should be required to have five separate security features. This overly burdensome and unnecessary gold plating of every cigarette pack in the EU is impractical and will not result in any additional security of the products, or the supply chain, and will likely force non-tax stamp countries to adopt outdated tax stamps to comply with this mandate. Instead of this result, JTI proposes limiting the number of authentication elements to be selected by Member States to two, as required by the primary legislation, which will provide more flexibility to Member States and will better take into account the needs of both tax-stamp and non-tax stamp Member States.
It is clear that implementing acts must be necessary and appropriate for the implementation of legislation, without supplementing or amending the legislation. In this case, the draft IA goes way beyond the legislation in several respects. First, as above, the TPD does not require semi-covert features and it mandates only two security features per pack. Second, TPD does not require that any feature be created by a supplier who is “independent” from the manufacturer. Indeed, the only requirement for independence in TPD is the requirement that the data storage provider be independent from the manufacturer. For purposes of this response, even assuming such an independence clause was legal and appropriate (which it is not), if the legislators had required independence for security feature providers, they would have created a Delegated Act to address the key elements of a contract with these “independent” security solution providers, just as they did with the “independent” database providers. Of course, the legislators did not do so, and therefore it is beyond dispute that this draft requirement would result in an unlawful amendment and supplement to the TPD.
Lastly, the proposal does not adhere to internationally recognized standards for security features such as ISO 12931:2012, which defines the criteria for authentication solutions and there is absolutely no rationale to define different standards for tobacco products. Therefore the requirement to have five security features as well as the failure to apply internationally recognized standards further breaches the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement.
For these reasons, we ask the Commission to delete any reference to “independent” security feature providers, reduce the number of security elements from 5 to 2, delete the reference to semi-covert features and follow more closely international standards on security features.
Read full responseResponse to Delegated act under Article 15(12) of the Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU
2 Oct 2017
The independent data storage is the cornerstone of the whole track and trace system as per the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) Recital 31 and Article 15. It is the only role in the track and trace legislation that requires an “independent” provider, appointed by the tobacco manufacturer. This fact is critical because the existence of a Delegated Act (DA) to govern the key elements of the storage contracts between the manufacturer and the database provider is a perfect illustration that the legislators did not contemplate having “independent” providers for any other facet of the track and trace system. If they had, then there would be draft DAs for contracts with these providers (e.g., ID Issuers, Security Feature Providers, Anti-Tampering Device Providers, etc.).
The legislators, however, did not do this. Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that the database supplier is the only supplier who needs to be “independent” from the manufacturer under the TPD. To read the legislation any other way would be disingenuous and would result in an unlawful amendment and supplement of the legislation. Of course, this, for now, ignores the fact that such an independence clause may itself violate the Charter of Fundamental Rights for commercial actors to conduct business. To the extent that requiring independence is permissible, it would have been particularly important to enlarge this independence criteria for the management of the new data storage repositories to all of the Commission’s consultants in the process of establishing these implementing and delegated acts.
Another issue raised by the DA is the unrealistic timing of the draft Implementing Act on track and trace Article 15 (IA). Several times, the DA refers back to the IA and the role the primary repository provider must play in implementing the terms of the IA. Therefore, it is important to identify the severe timing problems for the implementation of the IA and the DA in this section.
In particular, assuming the IAs and the DA are approved by December 31, 2017, and that the selection and appointment period for suppliers follows the timeline set out in the IAs and DA, the primary repository providers would only first sign agreements with the secondary repository provider around September 2018 (Draft IA, Annex 1, Part B). Moreover, the secondary repository will only first disclose the specifications for the data exchange to the economic operators (e.g., the primary repositories providers, ID Issuers and all economic operators) in October 2018 (Draft IA, Article 28). These facts mean that none of the economic operators will know what systems and processes they need to acquire, adopt and implement until only a few months before implementation is mandatory in May 2019. This timeline is simply impossible to meet and must be revisited by the Commission.
The cause of this impossible-to-meet timeline is clear, DG SANTE’s consultants did not work closely with the main stakeholders in this legislation – the manufacturers. Whether this was caused by inappropriate lobbying and the interests of commercial actors who have a great desire to secure lucrative contracts with the EU for track and trace, or whether this was based on a false interpretation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the failure to work closely with the only knowledgeable entities in the supply chain has once again resulted in a wildly inappropriate and unfeasible draft regulation that the Commission must now fix. This delay is certainly not the fault of the thousands of members of the EU-wide tobacco supply chain who should not now be forced to meet this punitive timeline.
Read full responseResponse to Implementing act under Article 15(11) of the Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU
2 Oct 2017
In exercising its implementation powers, the Commission may adopt measures that are necessary or appropriate for the implementation of Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) without supplementing or amending TPD (TFEU Art. 291 and TEU Art. 5). The draft implementing act for Article 15 TPD (IA) violates EU law because it supplements and amends the TPD and in doing so, fails to pass a proportionality test. The draft IA therefore unlawfully exceeds the powers conferred by TPD, as elaborated in more detail below.
ID Issuers: The IA requires a single independent ID Issuer be appointed by each Member State (MS). This unnecessary process is unsupported by any risk assessment of the existing supply chain. Instead, this process would create anti-competitive monopolies in each MS. Indeed, there is no requirement for independent and monopolistic ID Issuers in the TPD. If there had been, the legislation would have at least prescribed a corresponding delegated act to address the key elements of a contract between the ID Issuer and a manufacturer.
The IA attempts, in contradiction of Article 15, to prevent tobacco manufacturers from generating their own unique identifier (UI) codes. This unexpected addition to the IA can only be the result of improper advocacy by interested commercial parties because it only adds unnecessary costs and complexity to the system, without assisting in the fight against illicit trade. It must therefore be removed.
A further issue related to UIs comes from the requirement that manufacturers have to provide data to ID Issuers that is potentially unknown before the time of production. For example, the machine that will be used for manufacturing regularly changes at a moment’s notice for any number of reasons, including a breakdown of the machine or a needed spare part on order. Additionally, this concept fails to take into account the reality of the marketplace, including the fact that manufacturers make product “for stock.”
The composition of the UI does not reflect international standards and is not consistent with the current practice of the industry. The adoption of ad hoc standards which are more trade-restrictive than existing and fully applicable international standards is in breach of the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement. In particular, the length of the unique identifier is proposed to be 50 alphanumeric characters. Printing 50 alphanumeric characters on a cigarette pack is not feasible on high speed production machines. Accordingly, this number should be reduced to the well-established GS1 standards for serial numbers of 20, thereby allowing the EU system to be used with the industry standard GTIN number, so that it can be interoperable with other systems across the globe.
Aggregation Codes: The IA requirement for aggregation UIs exceeds the TPD which only requires marking of unit packs, and remains overly burdensome to the supply chain by extending this requirement to all economic operators, again, with no additional benefit in securing the aggregation of already “secure” UIs at pack level. Also, the fact that the aggregation ID Issuer must be appointed by the MS where the aggregation takes place results in an unlawful barrier to trade in the EU, especially for imported products.
Exports: The implementing acts must not apply to export products because TPD Art. 15 applies only to products placed “on the market” (see Art. 2 (30 & 40)). Enforcing such a self-defeating requirement would only result in the loss of production, jobs and investment in the EU.
Anti-Tampering Device: The requirement for third party anti-tampering devices on manufacturing machines was not foreseen in the TPD and essentially amends the legislation, having a huge impact on production. There is simply no need for such a device because the primary data storage already has a full list of codes coming directly from the production line.
Read full responseMeeting with Fabrice Comptour (Cabinet of Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska)
5 Feb 2016 · regulatory issues
Meeting with Bernardus Smulders (Cabinet of First Vice-President Frans Timmermans) and DIGITALEUROPE and
14 Jan 2016 · AECA Round-Table on “Dealing with Regulatory Burden
Meeting with Riccardo Maggi (Cabinet of First Vice-President Frans Timmermans)
23 Nov 2015 · Better Regulation Package